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Just watched the second of two consecutive reports MSNBC's Keith Olbermann delivered on voting irregularities. All in all, excellent work. I'm gaining some serious respect for the man. Tonight's report included a number of instances of problems I hadn't yet heard of, including counties with more votes than registered voters, counties where vote tabulators produced errors in local races that, once reversed, changed the outcome of the election, a county where a e-vote machine irretrievably lost 4000+ votes, and a county where a machine reported a final vote total several million in the NEGATIVE.

As I've said numerous times, the point of this story is not whether it proved decisive in the outcome of our election. I personally don't believe it did. The point is that it is simply inexcusable for our electoral system to rely on technology this pathetically lame. For god's sake, if we can (supposedly) build a national missile shield, why can't we get machines that properly and SECURELY count our votes once each year?

Also, a question about a factoid from the program. One of his guests mentioned this: "We spend more each year in this country on prison food than we do on our election boards." Anyone know if this is true? And if it is, what the hell does that say about our society?

Miss the MSNBC report? Here's a link for you.

UPDATE: The Nation has a great piece that puts this entire discussion into the framework it belongs. It's not about changing the result of this election. It's about protecting the electoral process. We need to move this from the "We wuz robbed!" frame to the "fix the system!" frame. Otherwise, we'll be discussing this one again come 2008.

UPDATE II: Add Salon.com to the list of media organizations picking up on this story in a non-Reynolds Wrap sort of way. Here's an example of something I hope we see more of from the major media outlets:

"Given my current state of knowledge, it seems unlikely there will be enough bogus votes found to reverse the election," says David Dill, the Stanford computer scientist who's been leading the charge against paperless electronic voting machines for the past two years. At the same time, though, Dill adds that he's making "a highly qualified statement," and that he does not want to "declare the election over and done with." Odd things did occur last Tuesday, and even if the results aren't overturned, "it's extremely important that we seize this opportunity to review everything we can about this election," Dill says. "Having people comb through these results will give us more confidence in the legitimacy of this election. We shouldn't gain that confidence by resorting to the head-in-the-sand method we usually employ in the United States."

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